


Life Choices

by TwentyFirstCenturyJane



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwentyFirstCenturyJane/pseuds/TwentyFirstCenturyJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first few times they meet Suki thinks nothing of it. Toph is a child, and the world is burning down around them and Sokka will have to choose eventually but not right now and even if it happened tomorrow, even if it was all over by the time the sun rises, Suki is confident in the thought that Sokka will choose her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Choices

 

 

The first few times they meet Suki thinks nothing of it. Toph is a child, and the world is burning down around them and Sokka will have to choose eventually but not right now and even if it happened tomorrow, even if it was all over by the time the sun rises, Suki is confident in the thought that Sokka will choose her.

He loves her and she loves him and maybe they are only sixteen but Suki’s mother was married at that age, and her grandmother even younger, it isn’t an impossible dream, a home on Kyoshi Island, happy blue eyed, darker skinned children with Sokka’s sarcasm and her own fighting skills.

It’s a happy dream.

00000

The battle is over, Ozai is defeated by a method she still isn’t entirely clear on, and they’re all headed out together, to rebuild this world of theirs.

Sokka’s leg is still splinted, the bone had been neatly severed in three places, and she can see the pain on his face with every step he takes, but he’s determined to help, he won’t be left behind, even if that means damaging his body further. The muscles of his shoulder are still frayed, torn, and his arm is kept in place plastered to his chest by heavy bandages.

She can’t forget he got both these injuries nearly diving off an airship head first after Toph.

She knows he would have done the same for her, but it still stings somewhere deep down.

Katara and Aang are ahead of them on Appa, headed off to the Earth Kingdom Capital, Suki and Toph both remained behind to wait until Sokka no longer needed the pain medication to get through the hours he spent awake.

Suki doesn’t think they waited long enough, but she’d been overruled by both Sokka and Toph, and she isn’t bitter about that at all.

Toph and Sokka converse easily, loud laughter and dirty jokes that Suki blushes at, and wonders how someone as young as Toph ever learned.

The sun is warm and the world is starting to stabilize and it almost feels okay until Toph trips over an exposed tree root.

Sokka leaps forward, catches her with his free arm, holds her closer and tighter than necessary as she regains her footing. There are twin spots of color high up on her cheeks and Suki doesn’t know if it’s from Sokka’s proximity or the embarrassment of tripping, but she goes to let go and the tightness in Suki’s chest loosens a little.

“Toph you have to be more careful!” he admonishes, takes the girl’s hand in his own, “Come on, I’ll help.”

Toph continues to blush but doesn’t push him away.

Suki feels a little sick to her stomach.

00000

They make camp for the night, only another day’s travel from their rendezvous point with the Water Tribe battalion and Toph is setting up her earth tent, jagged peaks forcing their way into the sky and Suki is irrationally relieved that she won’t have to look at the tiny Earthbender for a while.

“Toph, you should stick close to me tomorrow.”

Sokka can’t possibly know how his words sound sometimes, because then he wouldn’t say them. Right?

“I can handle myself Snoozles.”

Toph sounds slightly strangled. Suki’s heart clenches.

“I can’t have you getting hurt, Toph, I’m out of commission for a while, we need you at top fighting form.”

Toph simply huffs and puts up the rest of her tent, effectively blocking them from further conversation, but Suki still hears her muffled reply of “fine” and Sokka smiles, wide and unhindered.

He’s snoring within minutes.

Suki doesn’t fall asleep until near dawn.

000000

The next day isn’t much better. The conversation is still mostly between Toph and Sokka and Suki doesn’t really feel the need to but in, she isn’t entirely certain she’d have anything to say.

Sokka is holding Toph’s hand again, like he held it that day on the air ships, the movement is familiar, like he’s done it a million times before, like it’s a natural position for them to share.

Suki exhales loudly, but neither of her companions look at her. She trips, on purpose; fully expecting a warm hand on her arm, around her waist, what she gets is a mouthful of dirt.

Sokka makes a wordless sound of surprise and bends down to help her, “Suki, you okay?”

He helps her up, she brushes herself off, and his hand immediately clamps back onto Toph’s.

“Fine, just distracted,” which is close enough to the truth that she doesn’t feel bad about lying to her boyfriend.

Sokka huffs, “You should be more careful.”

Suki supposes she deserves what she gets for feeling the need to manipulate her boyfriend like that.

Doesn’t mean she has to like it.

00000

The Earth Kingdom Capital is huge and gorgeous and she can feel herself drowning in all the sights and smells it has to offer.

Toph and Sokka are closer together now than they were out on the paths of the woods, hands still entwined.

Suki wonders how Kyoshi Island is faring.

00000

Aang and Katara have silly sappy smiles on their faces in Iroh’s tea shop, and Zuko is curled close to Mai.

Suki sits with her cup of tea next to her boyfriend, trying her best to ignore that Toph is the one on his other side.

Sokka, for his part, is laboriously working over a sheet of paper that he won’t let anyone else see.

It turns out to be a picture of them all, and Suki doesn’t miss how Sokka’s likeness of himself is sat next to his rendition of Toph. Not that either painted figure looks much like its real world counterpart, but Suki can tell, and it turns her stomach.

She puts her tea down and doesn’t pick it back up.

00000

She wants to go back to Kyoshi Island, wants to see her warriors, and wants to see her village. Sokka smiles and nods until she asks when he wants to leave.

He tells her that he had planned to go back to the South Pole with Katara, meet up with their dad on the way, get back to his own people for a while; make sure that his home is safe and secure.

Suki can’t begrudge him it, until she learns that Toph has been invited along.

She knew one day he’d have to choose, she just didn’t think it’d be this soon.

And she didn’t think he’d choose wrong.

00000

It’s been almost eight years and the world has been stabilized, for the most part. There are still rebel factions popping up places, people who can’t accept that there are no “enemies” anymore.

Suki gets an invitation to a wedding.

She puts on her best dress and travels to Omashu.

She cheers for the Avatar and the Lady Katara as Iroh clasps their hands together and proclaims them husband and wife.

She eats and drinks and laughs and reminisces and dances and it’s like old times. Sokka and Toph are twirling around the dance floor, fluid and in sync, like two halves of a whole, and Suki feels a little twinge of regret in her that she hadn’t fought harder for the Water Tribe boy who’d been her first love.

A tall man breaks through the couple and Sokka gently relinquishes his partner.

Suki feels a note of surprise that Toph goes so easily and that Sokka can even let her go. There’s sunlight glinting off the gold of Toph’s wedding band.

She wonders who the man is that Sokka would hand his wife over to.

Then she sees the smile on Toph’s face, the answering grin on the man’s, the sunlight that glints off a gold band; and Sokka’s own bare finger.

She understands it then.

Sees the look of pained happiness on Sokka’s sweet handsome face and gently steps up to him, asks him to dance.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the blind Earthbender for the entirety of the song.

Her heart breaks for him.

00000

Another two years and she gets a letter containing news of the birth of the first child of the Avatar, the marriage of Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lady Mai, and the announcement of Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, now an Ambassador, that there is peace in the world once again.

She places a hand on her own swollen belly and leans back against her husband’s broad chest.

Things have an odd way of working themselves out.

000000

Another year and a half and she’s traveling again.

A funeral this time.

Even with all her friends there, there isn’t a single smile. She bounces her baby on her hip, curls in close to her husband to keep out the chill.

Katara has a toddler at her feet, swollen belly at her front, and the Avatar at her side.

Toph stands apart from the rest of them, there’s a slight swell to her tiny frame, and the Earth rumbles beneath the gathered party’s feet when the casket is swallowed by dirt.

Sokka steps forward, holds Toph tight, standing as still as a pillar when she finally breaks down and cries into his arms.

He soothes her and Suki’s heart breaks at the anguish on his features. His bad leg twitches, bends out without his control and he dips when Toph pushes her whole weight onto him, but he keeps standing, forces the knee to straighten, rolls his bad shoulder.

His finger is still bare.

00000

Suki’s first daughter is nearly seven now, her belly swollen again, she’s hoping for a boy this time around, she thinks that three girls is enough to help out with the Kyoshi Warriors.

The news of the first Fire Nation prince being born broke over two months ago, news of another Avatar baby nearly a year now, and it’s been six years since the announcement of little Lin Bei Fong.

Suki somehow knows that Sokka’s finger is still bare.

00000

It’s been nearly twenty years since the end of the war when the announcement comes and Suki packs up for one last trip.

Toph and Sokka dance like they did on Aang and Katara’s wedding day. Sokka’s bad leg sometimes moves without his permission and sometimes his damaged arm will shiver and twitch, but he’s smiling wider than she’s ever seen.

His finger is encircled by a dark, almost black looking, band, and one that matches sitting on Toph’s.

Sokka chose Toph over Suki twenty years ago, and Toph has finally chosen him back.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tokka is totally my OTP for the Avatar verse, but I love Suki as a character and couldn't just let Tokka get together at the expense of who she is as a person, so I wrote this. Does include elements of Korra in the mention of marriages and kids, plus some of my own personal spin on things.


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